Police commissioner Kuldip Sharma says the policemen led by a DCP, who have set up base in Ganjam, left for Orissa on June 6 and are expected to return by the first week of July. Taking the help of local police, the Surat contingent has broken up into smaller teams and spread to various parts of Orissa.

The size of the team (Sharma says 60, the police control room 100), unique in Gujarat and perhaps the country in a non-terrorist operation, has raised eyebrows. ``The criminals are spread all over Orissa'', Sharmaexplained. They are implicated in a wide range of crimes from murder and rape to industrial unrest. The past few months have seen several incidents of police firing to quell mobs of rioting workers.

By Monday night, the Surat police had arrested 11 of them, including four in connection with the rape and murder of two schoolgirls last November, an incident that had led to angry demonstrations and public outrage. However, their biggest success has been in finding out the whereabouts of criminals staying in Surat.

The city is temporary home to four lakh labourers from Orissa who form the backbone of the powerloom industry, comprising more than 60 per cent of the workforce. They are known to put in long hours for low wages; industrialists say local labour is no substitute for them. They keep their overheads down with their Dickensian living conditions: Up to 20 in a room of not more than 100 sq ft.

What went wrong? Jayantibhai Gajjar, president of the Katargam GIDC Association, says the crimes committed bythe anti-socials and criminals externed by the Orissa police has tainted the reputation of bonafide labourers. Others have turned to crime following a long spell of recession in the industry. ``But most are innocent'', Gajjar says.

The police, however, don't deal in such subtleties. The crime graph, they say, went up only after the advent of migrant workers in the last decade. Police commissioner Kuldip Sharma told The Indian Express that a list of 339 criminals and anti-socials drawn up recently has 86 names from Orissa. Oriya migrants, he adds, are involved in one-third of the violent crimes reported from Surat.

In fact, the police have singled out labourers from Orissa in the past, too. Recently, it carried out a drive to have all Oriya workers photographed after requests from several industry lobby groups.

However, these actions could be seen as a concerted campaign against one community and could reap a backlash, say social scientists. Father Vincent, director of social-service organisationNavsarjan, feels the branding of Oriya workers -- who are already derisively called `Udiyamalis' -- as criminals might create social tension. ``The local population will start treating them as enemies'', he feels. ``The industry may want them but locals may not.''

Urmilaben Rana of the Dakshin Gujarat Kamdar Sangh Urmilaben Rana says powerloom owners use crime as a handle to get rid of excess staff. ``When we try to come to their rescue the police accuse us of being hand in glove with workers, '' she says adding ``if police harassment increases workers might have a second thought about staying in Surat.''

That view doesn't wash with Jagannath Pathy of South Gujarat University's Sociology department, who has done a study on migrant labourers. The police drive won't lead to any tension; the industry simply can't do without Oriya workers.

This time, though, the Gujarati expertise in not allowing anything to get in the way of business may have come undone.